Sound and moisture barrier requirements for today's passenger vehicles, as well as other devices containing electrical wiring, are becoming increasingly more stringent. Aside from a desire to provide a dry, quiet interior for vehicle occupants, an important design consideration is to protect the vehicle's numerous electrical components and their associated wiring, particularly when designing vehicle doors. Similar design issues are also present in a variety of electrical devices wherein wiring passes between components that move relative to one another. Conventional solutions include using weather-stripping along the edges of the two components, such as along an inside edge of a vehicle door and along a mating edge of a door jam on the vehicle body. Although effective for providing a generally watertight seal between the door and the vehicle body, protecting the electrical components and wiring for vehicle features such as locks and automatic window controls, is often a more challenging task. The wires are generally joined together (referred to as a “wiring harness” or “wire harness”) in the door and extend from an opening in the door to the vehicle body. Due to the inherent geometry of the door as it is attached to the vehicle body, there will generally always be a section of wiring harness that may be partially exposed to various levels of moisture.
When routing a wire harness between components that move relative to each other, such as between a door of a vehicle and the vehicle body, three basic regions of varying varying moisture content may be considered; a wet region, a moist region and a dry region. For example, referring again to the example of a motor vehicle, the wet region lies between the exterior of the vehicle and a primary weather stripping that is vertically mounted to an edge face of the door. Water that is able to penetrate into this region is generally repelled by the primary weather stripping. However, some water may penetrate past the primary weather stripping into what is referred to as the moist region. The moist region is defined as the area between the primary weather stripping and a secondary weather stripping that is mounted along an edge of the vehicle body. The secondary weather stripping reduces wind noise and creates a final water barrier between the moist region and the dry region, such as the passenger compartment. To protect the component wiring from exposure to moisture and other contaminants, the wire harness is generally sealed or covered by a grommet or other mounting structure. In some cases, the grommet or mounting structure extends from the wet region through the moist region to the dry region. In other words, at least a portion of the grommet or mounting structure is exposed to each of the three regions. In this way, the grommet or mounting structure undesirably provides a path for water to seep from the wet or moist regions into the dry region. A shortfall with existing grommets and mounting structures is that they fail to control or manage this water penetration in the moist region. If not properly managed, the water will travel along the body of the mounting structure and into the dry region. The embodiments disclosed herein were developed in light of these and other drawbacks with existing grommet and mounting structures.